The Gruen Transfer is a blog where I examine the world of marketing, how to affect it, how it affects the world, and how I one day plan to take it over (The world, not marketing.) If you have anything particular you'd like talked about gimme a buzz.

Friday, October 10, 2008

╠Insight - Vitamin Drinks╣

Most of you would know if not have tried a vitamin drink. These items are truly a great representation of the power marketing can have. They have successfully invaded and planted themselves places inside the drinks cabinets of the majority of vendors I have seen, and when your competition includes all of coke's, Schweppes' and many others plethora of different styles of drink you have yourself something to be proud of.

What I like most about it is that in essence all you have here is cordial with a dib of this vitamin and a dab of that one. I admit I was hooked for a period of time. I'd find whatever opportunity I could to buy one if it was reasonably priced. So much so that my craving for cheap varieties lead me to a store that sold them for $2.50 a bottle of Nutrient water which beats the average price by about a dollar. It was at this point I started to try every flavour and begun noticing the nutrient tables. To my surprise I found that I wasn't actually drinking pure nutrients...I was just drinking something that managed to have a couple of milligrams of a handful of selected vitamins. Being the stingy individual I am I decided to just go out and buy a pack of those Multivitamins, $15 and I get 60 days of much higher percentages of a larger array of vitamins.

So if you look closely these vitamin drinks aren't all they're cracked up to be...yet they still made it so far. The power of marketing prevails again. If you have something that loses worth if you look at it closely, target those who won't look at it closely. In this take target a group who just want to justify not treating their body as well as it perhaps deserves. Nutrients water tagline 'Be bad. Drink good' summarizes this perfectly. That warm fuzzy feeling you get from not inflicting a bottle of soft drink on yourself and instead choosing vitamin water costs the company nothing, doesn't mean they can't charge you for it though.

The perfect target market for this was university students. As a uni student I can say...we don't eat well, sometimes very poorly...and then we make up for it by drinking ourselves stupid...Not something I've exactly had the time to do recently...but if I did, I probably would have. So for us to have that little healthy drink that tastes not too bad and makes us think we're doing something good for ourselves is golden. However university students are often a tough group to market to because whilst we are all united by university, we are still very diverse, spread out geographically and spread out over many different favoured advertising mediums. So instead of doing normal advertising and waiting for us to acknowledge them, they come to us.

Nutrient water is well known for willingly showing up to any uni activities and handing out free samples. None of this sitting back with normal advertising, this is direct, punch in the face style advertising, and on uni students it works. Obviously this is a costly venture to just hand out your products for free...however in this case you can see it clearly paid off.

However there is one thing that I think could be improved of. However it may not be in their hands. In most take away joints meals are the most common purchases. Therefore it is the best way to clear drinks via this method. However Vitamin water is not available in a lot of these. The only take away places I have found to do this are Nando's and Oporto and they do charge you extra for it. I am an avid Subway eater and I do get quite disappointed everytime I go through that checkout because it always came down to do I want the cookie meal...or just a vitamin water...the vitamin water unfortunately never won.

This of course is all speculating on whether the distributor of these drinks has any power over organizations such as Subway. However personally even though I have discovered the secret of it just being a few cleverly placed vitamins into cordial I would still be willing to pay extra to have this slight positive drink as opposed to a huge thing of raspberry soft drink which really can't be doing me that much good at all.

In all essence the companies should have the power to say you get my drinks on the proviso it goes into a meal as an option even if you have to charge extra. This all goes to show that there is most likely always room for improvement even for as successful product launches as this. Distribution is an important aspect of any launch, it is important to get more than a simple yes or no for whether someone will stock your item or not. Whilst it did not cost Vitamin water...I'm sure in some other cases taking that extra effort could have beena make or break deal.

See... the main reason places like McDonalds don't sell products like vitamin water is that they have contracts with Coke claiming they won't sell other brands of drinks.. in return, they get their drinks for cheaper. This obviously benefits coke because they can monopolize the market, and McDonald's because they can pay less for their drink syrup and make more money. The only reason they ventured and began selling Nudie juice is because people were complaining that they couldn't get a healty and tasty option for the drink.Thus why vitamin water cannot be purchased at most fast food venues.

About Me

Michael Lanyon is currently a 3rd year Marketing and Management student at the University of Melbourne. His main interest is in branding and is currently volunteering as brand Manager and Promotional leader for Melbourne Anime Festival Inc.